190 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 



After the meetings of the joint committee had ceased, the chairman 

 of the committee on the part of the Senate, b}^ virtue of the authority 

 given him by his colleagues, presented to the committee on the part 

 of the House counter resolutions, disapproving of the application of 

 any part of the Smithsonian funds to the establishment of an astro- 

 nomical observatory, and urging the application of them to the founda- 

 tion of a university or institution of learning. 



At a meeting of the committee on the part of the House, on the 

 13th of February, 1839, the above resolutions, which had been sub- 

 mitted to the joint committee on the 6th, were unanimously adopted 

 by the members present at the meeting. 



As it was thus ascertained that the views of the chairman of the 

 Senate's committee could neither obtain the assent of the committee 

 on the part of the House, nor be conformable to theirs, it was agreed 

 that the chairman of the Senate's committee should prepare a bill 

 which he would wish to have reported, and that the committee on the 

 part of the House should also cause to be prepared a bill presenting 

 the principles upon which they had agreed, and that both the bills 

 should be reported together to both Houses of Congress for considera- 

 tion. The two bills were accordingly reported to both Houses: To 

 the House on the 16th of February, 1839, where they were twice read 

 and referred to the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the 

 Union. They are numbered 1160 and 1161 among the bills of the 

 House of the last session, but from the lateness of the time when they 

 were reported, and the pressure of other indispensable or more urgent 

 business, they were not taken up for consideration in the Committee 

 of the Whole, and remained without further action of the House upon 

 either of them at the close of the session. 



The l)ill prepared by the chairman of the Joint committee on the 

 part of the Senate was taken up in that body on the 25th of February 

 and after full debate, by a vote of 20 to 15, laid on the tal)le. On 

 the 19th and 20th of February, the Senator who had been the chair- 

 man of the joint committee introduced in the Senate a resolution to 

 authorize the mayor and city council of the city of Washington to 

 prepare a plan of an institution, to be called the Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion, and to report the same to the Senate at the next session, which 

 resolution was, on the 1st of March, 1839, laid on the table. 



The bill prepared by direction of the joint committee on the part of 

 the House, and reported to both Houses, was never acted upon by the 

 Senate. The bill referred to this committee was nearly a transcript 

 from it, and embraces the principles deemed by the committee of the 

 House, which at the last session reported the bill, of primary import- 

 unce for the organization of the Smithsonian Institution, in the man- 

 ner the most effective for accomplishing the purposes of the testator. 



The first of these principles is, that the capital sum of the Smithso- 



